


The Bachelor: Paradise in Wildemount

by Amrynth



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), The Bachelorette (TV)
Genre: AU August, Alternate Universe - Reality Show, Essek Mention, Gen, There's no specific ships here, Traveller Mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25759357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrynth/pseuds/Amrynth
Summary: It's the rose ceremony.  Who will receive a rose from Jester?  And who will turn her down?  Dramatic swelling music.  Tonight on The Bachelor: Paradise in Wildemount.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	The Bachelor: Paradise in Wildemount

**Author's Note:**

> This was stupidly fun to write. Day 6 of AU August: Reality TV!
> 
> Full Disclosure: I have never watched The Bachelor so I have a friend to thank for giving me a rundown of how a rose ceremony goes.

“Oh man. This is a really hard decision because- All of the dates have been really really fun, you know?” 

In the center of the ballroom a table of red roses drew most of the eyes of the occupants. There were more potential suitors than roses and they knew it. Beside the table, Jester was radiant in a pink ball gown with more ruffles than god. 

“You all look so pretty tonight. Oh no but I don’t want to send anyone home yet, we’re just getting to know one another. Okay okay okay.” She took a deep breath to steady herself and smiled again for the suitors and the camera. 

In front of her was an assortment of suitors from across Exandria. Women in beautiful dresses and men in tailored suits and those who weren’t either wearing clothes that suited their preferences were arrayed in tiers facing her. Jester picked up her first rose and smelled it while she thought about what name she would call. 

She scanned the assembled suitors and even though she had made a list ahead of time, just looking at them all made her want to rearrange it. 

“Beau.”

On the top level of the arrangement, one of the contestants actually fist pumped the air and jumped off the back rather than coming down the front in a more traditional manner. Beauregard was one of the women who chose not to go the ball gown route, wearing loose trousers and a sleeveless top in blue and teal. And jogged up to where Jester stood with the rose, unable to help a grin even though she had been trying to play it cool earlier. 

“Will you accept this rose?” Jester asked, holding out the flower. 

“Fuck yeah I will. Oh, sorry. Do you have to edit out fuck? Shit. Sorry.” Beau took her rose and winked at Jester. Rose in hand, she climbed up the rear side of the riser again, making some of the other contestants laugh before she popped up in her place. “Woo!”

Jester didn’t seem bothered by the awkwardness of the encounter, laughing behind her hands. “Oh wow that was really something. Okay. Um.” She picked up another rose and she had been told she wouldn’t have to pause dramatically, that they would edit the video to make it seem like she had. But Jester still had to pause and decide who she would offer her next rose to. 

“Okay, this one is for Fjord.”

“Hoo.” Fjord heaved such a sigh, pulling his ridiculously large hat off and coming down the risers like a normal person. “I’m really glad to hear that Jester.” 

“FjorDUH. You have to wait until I ask the question,” Jester reprimanded him. But then she smiled up at him, whipping her rose right under his nose. “Will you accept this rose?” 

“It would be my honor to accept this rose from you,” he answered, sounding smooth and cool. But then his fingers brushed Jester’s hand accepting the flower and nearly dropped the whole thing. In getting back into his position, Fjord tried to hide behind his hat to stop blushing until a producer gently pried it out of his hands to make sure it didn’t ruin the shot. 

Jester was laughing behind her hands again and finally lowered them to toy with her tail while she considered what to do with her next rose. She left her tail alone to pick up the bloom and press one of her thumbs against where a thorn should have been. “Bryce?”

Somewhere in the middle of the riser the blonde half-elf looked more surprised than anything else to have had their name called. Bryce turned sideways and came down to stand in front of Jester, nervously smoothing the front of their shirt down. 

“This one is yours, do you accept it?” Jester asked. 

There was a split moment of hesitation that the cameras would capitalize on; Jester could guess that Bryce was thinking about their duty, it was their dedication to protecting a town that had caught Jester’s interest. She’d never had much dedication to anything other than picking the perfect cupcake and she could almost imagine a different world when she was with Bryce. 

“Yes. Thank you.” The hesitation was gone and Bryce smiled, accepting the rose with a shy smile. 

“Yasha?” Jester looked up through her bangs to the tall woman, looking even more imposing at the back of the group where her height was accentuated. 

“Excuse me. Sorry, excuse me,” Yasha carefully moved to the front and stood in front of Jester. 

“I thought it was so much fun to paint with you the other day. So will you accept my rose?” she asked.

This time the wait was more pronounced, Yasha gazing down at the flower in Jester’s hand with a frown on her lips. “Jester I- I really enjoyed painting with you. But I can’t accept your rose, I’m sorry. This has all made me realize that I’m not ready to- I still love her. You know? And I like you a lot but I guess I’m not done mourning.” 

“Oh Yasha, that’s okay.” Jester flung her arms around Yasha, ignoring the rose in her hand and managing to whack Yasha across the face with it. But the taller woman accepted her hug as inevitable (it was) and gently returned the gesture. “You don’t have to take my rose, it’s okay.” 

Before she could return to her position in the ballroom, Yasha softly kissed Jester on the cheek. “I hope that you find what you’re looking for. I’m just not sure this is what you really want. Is it?”

Jester blinked at her. Everyone wanted love, didn’t they? Okay sure she hadn’t actually been that interested in it other than the abstract in her stories. But when the producers had approached her and her mama about being on the show, she had been excited by the prospect of finding that sort of magic like this. In finding a connection that couldn’t be resisted. Before Jester had finished processing her words, Yasha had returned to where she’d been standing before, roseless and holding her head high. 

“Okay, well no one wants a second hand rose, right?” Jester said, laughing nervously and not sure why her chest was so tight. This was what she was looking for. Right? To cover her own sudden uncertainty, Jester turned her eyes down to the dwindling pile of roses and mixed the rejected one in until she wasn’t sure which one Yasha had refused. “There now none of them are second hand.”

“Okay. Calianna?” Jester pushed all the uncertainty away, smiling as bright as ever as she looked up into the ballroom.

“Oh! Oh my. Oh gosh.” Calianna wove her way to where Jester was, almost vibrating with excitement. 

“Hi. I was really happy when you took off your hood when we were on our date, you’re so beautiful and you shouldn’t hide it, okay?” She had to tell herself to slow down her words, she could be nervous later. For now she was the bachelorette and she was confident and happy. “Will you accept my rose?”

Nervously, Calianna pushed her hair back behind her ear to reveal the scaled side of her face. But she smiled at Jester, and thus at the cameras, reaching for the rose. “Yes. Thank you. You just look so cute up here. I like your dress.” 

“Thank you!” Jester laughed, visibly recovered from her own nerves. “Look what it can do, watch.” She twirled, the skirt floating out like so many pink clouds. 

Calianna also received a hug before returning to her position, rose clutched in her hand. 

The rest of the ceremony was unremarkable. Dairon accepted their rose with a stoic face. Reani literally lit up as she got her rose and had to be asked by the producers to tamp down the light show or she was going to upset the lighting in her shot. Keg tried to look unimpressed with her rose but her mouth kept twitching up toward a smile behind the bit of stubble that she couldn’t quite get rid of. Mollymauk didn’t look like he even belonged on the show, floating down to Jester to accept his rose. 

And suddenly Jester only had two roses left. She had been able to forget that one of her flowers had an unspoken curse of being rejected, her eyes flicking toward the contestants as she tried to guess who she had passed that curse to. Or was it still in her hand? She pushed her thumb against where a thorn had been removed again, imagining the phantom pain centering her in the here and now. 

She had thrown her list out the window at some point and her eyes roamed across the faces as she tried to determine who she still wanted to keep and get to know better. Of the remaining contestants, Caleb stood out in her memory. There was also Essek but their date had involved an alignment test and that hadn’t boded very well. 

“Caleb.” 

No one was more surprised to hear his name called than Caleb himself. He didn’t move at first, looking certain that there had been an accident or his ears had tricked him. 

“Go on, man.” Beau nudged him with her shoulder and spurred him into motion. 

“Hi Caleb,” Jester smiled so wide at him, one of the last two roses in her hand. “I feel like there’s a lot I don’t know yet and I hope that I will get the chance to get to know you. Also you cat is really cute and if I don’t give you a rose then I can’t see Frumpkin again.”

Caleb laughed nervously. “He is really my better half.” But his face fell a fraction, of course Jester would save him for his cat rather than anything he brought to the table. 

“This rose isn’t for Frumpkin, it’s for you Caleb.” Jester leaned down to where Caleb’s gaze had fallen, pulling it back up with nothing but force of personality. “Caleb. Will you accept this rose?” She held it out, hiding a small trembling in her arms by waving the dark, red bloom beneath his nose. 

“Yes, Jester. I do.” Caleb’s voice was soft and deadly serious. He’d cleaned up nicely and Jester’s heart did a little skip in her chest when he looked up at her, his hair pulled back neatly so his eyes were visible. “Thank you.”

One rose left. Jester was supposed to give them all away but a sudden impish thought made her nose wrinkle up as she tried to contain a giggle. Caleb had returned to where he’d been standing beside Beauregard, turning red as what had happened sank in. 

“And this last rose, I’m going to leave for the Traveller, because he knows my heart belongs to him, you know?” She set the final rose back on the table.

There was no trick of the cameras, but editing being what it was, no one would believe they hadn’t cut away. One moment there was a single rose on the table and the next it was gone, leaving only a waft of the smell of rich, earthy growing things. 

Jester, per the script she had been instructed to follow, left the room while the handlers separated the contestants who remained on the show from those who had not received a rose. They would all do their post-ceremony interviews but some of them were already getting weepy for the lack of roses. It would make for good television. 

No one could actually account for the missing rose.


End file.
